Picasso looks at Degas

This exhibition will trace for the first time the links between two of the most important artists of modern times. The show explores Picasso’s life-long fascination with Edgar Degas and his work, and amply represents the media used by both artists: drawing, pastels, painting, sculpture, printmaking and photography.

The outcome of extensive international research, this exceptional show brings together outstanding works on loan from some of the world’s most important institutions and collections, and promises to make a unique contribution to the reappraisal of Picasso’s work.

Picasso-Degas casts a new light on the emergence of modernism in the twentieth century, as a new generation of artists assimilated, reinvented or turned away from the Impressionist art of their predecessors. By letting us see Degas through Picasso’s eyes it reveals significant aspects of the way the Spanish painter perceived the past and revisits Degas’s own radicalism. The exhibition will bring together between 120 and 130 pieces, including a large number of paintings and sculptures by the two artists, with the aim of offering adequately documented examples of Picasso responding directly to Degas, as well as bringing out more unexpected conceptual affinities between their works. The thematic sections cover Picasso’s early academic training, the young artist’s interest in Degas’s imagery of modern life, the two painters’ shared obsession with toilette scenes, Picasso’s experiments in three dimensions in comparison to Degas’s, Picasso’s fascination with the ballet and Picasso’s prolonged dialogue with the French artist in the graphic work of his last years.